Donald Trump Junior and Vanessa Trump announced earlier that they are separating after more than 12 years of marriage.

The couple, who have five children together, released a joint statement confirming the split.

The 40-year-olds met way back when in 2003, and thankfully the details of that first meeting are public knowledge. That’s because Vanessa, at the time a model, recalled the first meeting in an interview that is pretty revealing.

The tale of two soulmates coming together, via the help of a wingman father, comes at you via the New York Times:

“I’m at this fashion show,” Vanessa Trump said, recalling their meeting in 2003. “Donald Trump comes up to me with his son: ‘Hi, I’m Donald Trump. I wanted to introduce you to my son Donald Trump Jr.'”

The three engaged in a brief, awkward conversation.

At intermission, the elder Trump again noticed a gorgeous girl nearby.

“Donald comes back up to me again, ‘I don’t think you’ve met my son Donald Trump Jr.,'” Vanessa Trump recalled. She remembers responding, “Yeah, we just met, five minutes ago.”

Six weeks later, at a birthday party at a New York restaurant, they were introduced a third time, this time by a mutual friend. Neither remembered the other. “We talked for an hour,” she recalled.

Then suddenly, something clicked: Wait, you were at that fashion show. Wait, you’re “the one with the retarded dad!” Vanessa blurted out.

A rather unfortunate choice of words there, Vanessa. Should have gone with dotard.

The couple married on November 12, 2005, at Mar-a-Lago. This picture, with Eric on the right and Ivanka on the left of the newlyweds, is yours to enjoy:

I don’t know what is worse, Eric’s facial expression or the fact that Ivanka wore white to the wedding.

News of their impending split has been doing the rounds all week, and according to Vanity Fair it might have something to do with Don Jr.’s obsession with Twitter.

Like father, like son – a quick look at some of their alleged issues:

One is that since Junior’s dad became president, suddenly everything was not “low-key,” the way Vanessa likes it, but instead, extremely high-key all the time. A second issue is that Junior has always traveled [sic] a lot, and he’s traveling even more these days: hunting big game, running the Trump Organization, at jury duty, hawking luxury condos in India. And the third is that Don Jr.’s tweets have grown more unhinged. These friends are concerned, pointing especially to the fact that he liked tweets linking antidepressants to school shootings.

Yeah, and he also liked those tweets spreading conspiracy theories about the Florida School shooting kids.

You can pop past Don Jr.’s Twitter account at almost any time and see his obsession in action, and you can bet he won’t be taking any time away from social media.

[sources:nyt&vanityfair]